


Scott is Laughing

by Vincey



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 19:33:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18947407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vincey/pseuds/Vincey
Summary: It’s like soundless sunny reggae is constantly playing around this guy.





	Scott is Laughing

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Скотт смеется](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/484753) by Еж колючий. 



‘Okay, I’m in!’ an unshaven slim guy says easily, and holds out a hand to him across the table.

 

His eyes are glowing with delight, as if he was a kid just suggested to go to Disneyland.

 

Suddenly something is scratching Clint from the inside, thistly and heavy.

 

‘Did you really get me?’ he asks again. ‘Five Soviet killer cyborgs. Supersoldiers, living killing machines of flesh and blood.’

 

‘And will I get my rollercoaster ride?’ Scott Lang is smiling. ‘Hey, I’ve already said ‘yes’. There’s no need for further fast talk, I won’t change my mind anyway. I’m in one team with Captain America and Hawkeye! That's jaw-dropping!’

 

‘Ask Steve to take a selfie. It always drives him mad’, Clint drops frowningly.

Scott is laughing.

 

It’s like soundless sunny reggae is constantly playing around this guy.

 

Barton is curious whether Scott has even been in a real fight? And he has no chance to ask whether he ever had to kill people. The entire shit storm starts too quickly. And here they are, smashing the airport in the German capital. Clint has a great mind to ask Steve is this the way he’s always dreamt of getting to Berlin, but he’s out of his breath, and he still has to keep an eye on Wanda.

 

Amazingly, Scott keeps a stiff upper lip. Clint nods his approval to a pretty good throw with a fuel tanker. The glowing flame devours any remorse that he drew a _civilian_ into their strange war. Scott is a fighter, no doubt.

 

Except that fighters are often sacrificed to clear the way to captains.

 

Scott is still laughing loud, wielding Rhodey as if he was a toy transformer, and Clint already realizes that the two of them can’t leave the scene. Maybe only Sam, for he has wings.

 

Lang is falling on the ground as a tower, as a gravely wounded knight in his awkward armor.

 

Dodging T'Challa, Barton shoots a glance: ‘how is he? alive?’, and misses a royally mighty nob.

 

The world is fading away.

 

***

‘Walks are not allowed here. And no, Ms. Maximoff, I’m not going to loosen your collar off’, the jailer is answering their questions icily. He is leaving the ‘anteroom’, slamming the door as if it was the gate to hell.’

 

‘You fleecy antbugger!’ Scott is shouting at him.

 

Clint cannot see Wanda in her cell but he happens to hear a strange sound.

 

For the first time a week, in this underwater hell deprived of sunlight and fresh air, Wanda chuckles like a silly girl.

 

Sometimes Scott nags the others that they shout ‘shut up!’ to him in concert. But if he happens to close his mouth, it’s just for a short time. ‘Lang radio Lang is on the air’, Sam is commenting from his cell.

 

Scott is laughing.

 

***

He’s laughing almost in all life situations. In distinction from Barton himself who prefers hounding the guardians with evil and spot-on jokes.

 

Scott is not laughing only when three men enter Clint’s cell and, after knocking him down with a stunner shot, keep on tramping the body, crumped by electric strike, with their legs.

 

‘I gonna dig you in!’ Scott is yelling savagely, beating against the bar. ‘I will rip your throat!’

 

Afterwards, one of them comes to Lang and hits him just two times or so, which is enough for the black out.

 

‘Hey Clint,’ Scott is whispering from the floor a few minutes later. ‘Are you alive there?’

 

‘Almost’, a hoarse, panting voice is responding. ‘And you?’

 

‘And I’m a panda’, says Scott, touching his swelling cheekbone.

 

‘Who?’ the neighbor is asking hoarsely.

 

‘A panda. Such a fluffy stuff with a black spot for the half of his mug.’

 

Clint feels a strong wish to dissolve into laughter but his ribs ache.

 

***

When Steve comes after them and releases them from the cells, Scotty is very serious. His lips are trembling when he’s helping Clint to get up from his bed. Barton can scarcely stand, and Scott is leading him to the jet plane arm in arm. The world seems so tremendous to them, it is so full of air and light that they can hardly breathe. The giant scarlet sun is sinking in the ocean.

 

***

The Wakandian sun is covering their skin with rich and fierce kisses, tempers to the bone, dries to the hardness of a tanned leather belt. Wanda goes outside seldom but Sam, Scott and Clint often leave the ‘Ruby Wakanda’ base. Clint is in command of a Wakandian rangers squadron, Sam serves under his command, and Scott goes down the jungle to study local insects almost every day.

 

Suntan sticks to his skin in a strong bronze layer. Scott snickers at Clint whose skin, despite all sun blocks, is coming off again.

 

‘Let me smear your back’, in the gym lock room, Scott takes a tube with balm for sunburn relief from Barton offhand and spreads the gel over the sinewed back crossed with several scars.

 

It should feel cooler now but for some reason Clint develops a fever.

 

Lang’s fingers are delicate and long. The Wakandian sun has tempered him to dark amber color. He resembles a high-bred, nervous hound.

 

And he has a beautiful mouth.

 

Clint is shaking his head, driving the uncalled pictures away. What is he thinking about.

 

***

The ‘Ruby Wakanda’ base stands on the cliff amidst the dark jungle sea. Rangers come down there every day, to patrol the territory between two vibranium mines.

 

Scott Lang comes down there every day as well. Only he doesn’t take a riffle. This makes Barton worry. He tries to adapt his schedule in order to accompany Scott every time. Scott’s looks are strange, either tauntingly or charitably, none would tell. But never argues.

 

While Scott is crawling among the trees on his knees, with a smell analyzer in his hands and a transmitter on his ear, Clint is sitting in the shadow, leaning against the huge gray trunk covered with moss spots.

 

The humid heat haze is quaking, sticking to sweaty neck. Blood is thumping in his temples. The jungle tickles nostrils with sharp, rich and bitterish smells.

 

Scott stands up suddenly, approaches Clint, and takes him by the hand.

‘You were asking how I’m going to defend myself in the jungle. I wanna show you. Look.’

 

He closes his eyes, and his bronze face with chiseled features stiffens fixedly. Spots of light and shadow are playing on his face and arms. A drop of sweat is crawling down the temple, leaving a wet track.

 

The land around roils. The carpet of rotten leaves and small branches comes to life. Clint understands: these are ants. Millions, billions of insects, live rivers merging into a sea.

 

Barton is afraid to move.

 

Scott is standing amidst this sea, stretching his arms like some deity, and sun winds are dancing in his green eyes.

 

***

Scott smells with jungle: wet hot moss and dry leaves, rich and bitterish flavor.

 

This smell tickles Clint’s odor sense all the way back home. So closely. He can’t think of anything else. The sudden panic attack makes him catch hold of the riffle belt until he feels pain in the fingers.

 

This is all wrong.

 

And the fact that he is standing at the door of Scott’s room closer to midnight is wrong as well.

 

He has been taught to plan his actions with due diligence. But now he’s desperately relying on improvisation, as every other time in his life when he was going to jump headlong into hell.

 

He knocks but no one responds, and then Clint just comes in.

 

He stops at the doorway.

Blinks like a fool.

Looks at Scott’s back.

 

And Scott is bending over his table, brazing something, humming under his breath. Not standing still but moving, skipping to music in his earplugs. He’s shirtless, wearing only jeans. Clint can’t take his eyes off those shoulder bones and muscles moving beneath the bronze skin. Smoothly, floatingly, but without that menacing, formidable grace inherent to murderers, to combat athletes, to Barton himself.

 

Easily, leisurely, in the rhythm of reggae.

 

The black drop earplug jumps out of his ear. Scott lifts his hand.

 

Turns back as if he could hear how the other heart is rumbling.

 

He goes to Barton across the entire room, and sunny reggae is boiling down around him.

 

Hot skin over his collarbone tastes like honey dissolved in a tea glass with a grain of chili pepper.

 

It’s torrid, and Clint is forging himself, biting it slightly.

 

Lang who is pressing him against the walls easily catches up his chin with fingers. Clint is shorter, and he has to bend his head back.

 

Scotty is quietly laughing right into his lips.

 

***

He stops chattering and laughing only when everything goes _in a serious way_.

 

They have only the balm against sunburns for lubricate.

 

Clint is trying not to hurry. In Scott’s eyes, challenge is merging with curiosity, delight and a drop of fear.

 

Clint wants to ask if he ever had a chance… If this is his first time. But the scalding narrowness around his fingers and the way Scott shudders coarsely, almost frightenedly... He’d rather not ask.

 

Barton soothes and caresses him, kisses the lean belly with fine, tense abs. Suddenly, Scott seems so fragile, and Clint wants to hold, to cuddle, to cover him with his own body, protect from any threat possible. He would give his life for him.

 

Clint is very, very hasteless and caring. But Scott is giving a lingering yell, feeling him inside.

‘Now, now it’s gonna be easier’, Clint is whispering, trying not to get loose because it is…

 

Scorching to pain, like the Wakandian sun.

 

Let it burn him to ashes, he won’t regret anything – neither now, when Scott is contracting around him, nor afterwards.

 

‘Afterwards’ is already close in on his heart, shortly cramping his underbelly. He’s restraining himself with the last strength, sliding over the other man’s dick with his palm, looking at Scotty wrestling under him, all sweaty, observing how his eyeballs dartle under the thin lids.

 

And then Scotty yells out something undistinguished and spills into his palm. And there’s only a couple of movements left for Clint to reach that rich bitterish honey and sun flashing in front of his eyes in this darkness.

 

***

Clint wakes up first, and gently takes Scott’s arm off his chest. Scott is still sleeping, breathing deeply. Barton settles him on the pillow cosily and goes to the balcony to smoke.

 

He can hear as below, in tree crowns, the birds’ choir is clattering desperately, as on the Doomsday dawn.

 

Clint sets his elbows against the railing, takes a puff, twists his lips from bitter smoke, and groans shortly, softly, remembering the last night.

 

_What has he done? With himself, with Scott, with everyone?_

_How would they live on?_

 

He has no answers to these questions.

 

But the edge of a huge golden sun peers over the treetops, and, at any rate, everyone’s alive. And it feels so damn good to smoke a cigarette.

 

Clint is squinting into the fantastic dawn flowing over the jungle. And he is laughing.


End file.
